At last, we come to Pacheco. Sullivan’s partner in crime. Or crime prevention, at least. Admittedly, also, sometimes crime. Sullivan’s partner, certainly.
Albeit not for long.
Pacheco was leaving ASP. They say you can’t ever really leave ASP, that the Academy’s slimy tendrils keep hold of you no matter what far-flung locale you decide to hide in, that the quasi-legal nature of ASP’s work entangles agents so severely as to virtually blackmail them , thereby creating a rigid enforcement mechanism whenever ASP decides to beckon back wayward members of its flock.
None of that is untrue, but ASP still had an HR department. It was to those hardworking, pencil-pushing automatons that Pacheco sent in her two-week notice. She received the meagerest of reproaches for leaving the team, but they hadn’t sent rabid Doberman Pinschers after her or frozen her credit cards. ASP was very powerful and they asked plenty of their employees, but there was still the law, after all.
Pacheco had prepared to send back her laptop and her badge. She’d saved relevant files to prescribed locations. She’d outlined outstanding projects and what it would take to, at last, close them. She’d done her best to prepare whoever would be unlucky enough to succeed her for success.
She had done all the things a person usually does when someone amicably leaves a job, whether they work in supply chain for a freight forwarder, marketing for a fast food chain, or as an agent for a supra-national, para-military, very shady non-governmental governmental organ tasked with saving the world from itself.
Except that she hadn’t told her partner.
It wasn’t unintentional.
She didn’t like Sullivan.
Put another way, Sullivan wasn’t likable.
He had a grating voice. He laughed with his mouth wide open, his jaw nearly unhinged. He was eager to discuss the news but never read anything more than the headlines. He never used his turn signals. He said things like ‘pop’ instead of ‘soda’ and ‘on accident’ instead of ‘by accident’. He…
Put another way, the things to loathe about Sullivan came much more easily to mind than the alternative.
She felt no obligation to tell him. It was a job; they weren’t married.
God forbid.
She had had enough of chasing aliens, or chasing those who chase aliens, and could do without spending another minute in Sullivan’s presence. Her next gig? That didn’t even matter to her. It was enough to leave ASP, to quit, to be gone, to never have to think about it, or Sullivan, again.
He was so proud of the behemoth SUPacheco they had given him. She had only given him the mildest reproach. Better not to encourage him. It was her next to last day. She saw no reason to let him think, now of all times, that she cared about him or the petty things that interested him.
All she had to do was keep her head down, do the bare minimum and wait for the sun to set two more times, and she would be free. Sullivan would wake up to an awful surprise when he found out she was gone for good. She, on the other hand, would wake up feeling more alive than she had in ages.
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At least, that’s what she was thinking as they trailed Dat Vinh’s Saturn. She barely even noticed Sullivan really pushing down on the accelerator or how quickly they caught up to the little lemon. She didn’t have time to say a thing before Sullivan embarked on his stupidest idea yet.
And then…
…well, then, what happened happened.
Any number of things that did not happen could have happened. For instance, Sullivan and Dat Vinh could have, in a collegial fashion, both gotten out of their respective vehicles, assessed what amounted to minor cosmetic damage to the old Saturn, and peaceably exchanged insurance information.
Or, in an unspeakably unique moment in time, the Saturn could have actually repelled Sullivan’s heavy-duty killing machine, causing that car to go careening off the side of the road. Naturally, afterward, Dat Vinh and Sullivan would have both gotten out of their respective vehicles, assessed what amounted to minor cosmetic damage to the old Saturn, and peaceably exchanged insurance information.
Or perhaps, upon realizing what her erstwhile partner was up to, Pacheco could have egged Sullivan on, determined to have a little fun in her last days of ASP employment. Imagine the scene: Sullivan’s motorized monstrosity chasing down Dat Vinh, Sam, and Hillary like a lioness chasing after antelope on the savannah. Those sorts of scenarios rarely end well for the antelope. There’s no reason to imagine it would go any better for the three miscreants either. Presumably, it would be even bloodier, too.
Of course, all of those things did not happen. Could have, but did not.
Of all the possible things to happen, only one actually did.
On account of its age and questionable manufacturing decisions, Dat Vinh’s Saturn went airborne almost immediately after impact. The car barrel rolled over the asphalt and into a ditch before taking one more roll in the mud for good measure. The time it spent in the air was brief. No more than a few seconds. At least, that’s how it appeared for anyone not in the car.
For Dat Vinh, Sam and Hillary, those two rolls lasted a lifetime. Shock had set in. They were unable to make sense of what was happening to them, how or why. The only thing they could be sure of was their own impending death. In those rolling, violent moments, there could be no other resolution.
They were about to die. This was plain to all three of them. Their deaths would represent the ending of three unremarkable lives, over one hundred years wasted between them. Quick arithmetic in their little spinning heads pointed out that they had accomplished only a tiny percentage of the goals they had set for themselves. The travel they had done in real life paled in comparison to the trips they had imagined they might go on. The amount of sex was paltry compared to what it could have, should have been -- Sam notwithstanding. He had done far better than he had ever expected.
They would die without having accomplished anything to justify a monument, a plaque, or even a roadside bouquet. They had such small circles of loved ones that memories of them wouldn’t last longer than a carton of milk bought that same morning. It was nothing to be sour about and there certainly wasn’t time for regret. There was only spinning, and in that spinning the realization that it was all over. Finished. Fade to black. Kaput.
When the car finally stopped its tumbles, both the hood and trunk simultaneously sprung open. All the scene was missing was a troupe of clowns bounding out with panache. By some miracle, the car had mostly survived. It would never drive again, of course. There was much damage done to the body, too. Plus, Dat Vinh had always driven uninsured -- it was something of a prerequisite for the crowd he went with, so there was no chance of getting the cash to get it running again. Other than that, though, the car was fine.
Its occupants, too. They were similarly bruised and, perhaps, no longer street legal. They were a little doozy, a little woozy, and still unsure of what was going on. But, considering that their barebones car had been assaulted by a bigger, beefier machine, and that their car had no semblance of a safety system, they came out in pretty good shape.
In fact, things only really got bad for them when they stepped out of the Saturn, and not just because it took some time for them to get their sea legs.